Longitude, Latitude
by Lee Whimsy
Summary: On October 11, 1809, Meriwether Lewis shot himself in the heart. Two hundred years later, he opened his eyes and realized that he didn't remember sunlight. Lewis/Clark.


Title: Longitude, Latitude  
Warnings: Angst, attempted suicide, historical slash (Clark/Lewis), run-on sentences  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: Lewis and Clark own themselves. The 'verse is owned by whoever owns NatM  
A/N: Inspired by (and written to) a song called "Like Lions Do" by the magnificent band Right Away, Great Captain. The section dividers are lyrics from the aforementioned song. Unbeta'd, as always.

* * *

i. _Writing almost every day that I've been gone_

Three weeks after That Night, the night that everyone talks about and no one really understands, Clark hands Lewis a three-subject notebook (college ruled) and a pack of black Bic pens. When Lewis, baffled, asks how he got them, Clark smiles and shuffles his feet and says that he asked Larry about it.

"So it's not really a present from _me_," he adds, "not yet. I haven't found a way to pay him back. But I thought you might—well. You know."

Lewis doesn't know, in fact, but he manages a smile and a polite _thank you _anyway, and Clark leaves for another night of exploration with a spring in his step. It's become a ritual, those long rambles around the museum halls—he only stays at their exhibit long enough to glare at President Roosevelt when he comes to pick up Sacagawea for their nightly rendezvous, and he's gone as soon as they are.

Clark doesn't like Theodore very much. Lewis thinks that Clark has made a career out of being overprotective. Theodore, though he never says as much, is slightly scared of them both.

No one understands all this but Sacagawea herself, and she never discusses it. Instead, she smiles a lot and lets Theodore do silly things like hold doors for her. Lewis, who has seen her climb mountains, crew riverboats, hunt game, and give birth, thinks occasionally that Theodore is something of an idiot.

But he makes Sacagawea smile, and Clark is always happier when his Janey is content. So Lewis sits alone in their exhibit, flips through the blank, lined pages of his new notebook, and doesn't say much of anything to anybody.

ii. _My flesh and blood are traitors to you_

One night, Lewis opens his eyes and realizes that he doesn't remember sunlight.

He remembers the _idea_, of course—of light and gentle warmth and the smell of the forest in summer—but the reality of it is beyond him, lost to the dreamless stasis of the museum's artificial lights. Hands trembling and heart pounding, he closes his eyes and tries to visualize the sun burning in the noon sky, painful intensity against the surrounding blue, eyes squinted and air hot against sunburned skin…

Nothing.

The mountain wind against his bare arms, biting and frigid; the acrid smell of gunpowder and the dull, sudden ache of a shotgun's recoil; running water, deep and strong and clear, and the bursting, terrifying feel of being underwater for a second too long; the coppery taste of blood and the crushing intensity of a bruising kiss, of calloused hands lingering on muscled, imperfect skin, trembling and beautiful. The images flit by in a vague, uncertain jumble, like wine robbed of its taste or a wasp with no sting. Empty words.

He hasn't come so close to crying since his father died.

iii. _Try to break the silence_

A month later, Clark gives him another notebook, tossing it in his general direction before leaning up against the glass walls of their enclosure with all the grace of a satisfied panther. This one is bright yellow, and it has a large, senseless design on the front that Clark informs him is a smiley face.

"You're always shut up in here with a pen and that journal," he says. "I figure that you've just about filled it up, so I got you a new one. Or Larry did, rather," he adds, scrupulously fair.

Lewis blinks, impulsively glancing between the battered, empty notebook lying on the ground beside him and the slightly newer one a few feet away. "Oh," he says, trying to sound sincere. "Thank you."

Clark's grin fades. "You…you have used it, have you?"

"A bit," Lewis says, because reassuring William Clark has suddenly become the most important thing in the whole of the world. "It's—it's just taking a while to get back into the habit, that's all. It feels strange."

Clark doesn't look convinced. Lewis tries again, scrambling up to his feet in order to look the other man in the eye. "Maybe I could sketch some of the other museum exhibits, to start with," he says. "It's not quite drawing paper, these flimsy sheets, but I'm sure I could manage something. There's so much to catalogue here that I hardly know where to begin."

That does it. Clark smiles again, and claps Lewis on the back. "That's the spirit," he says. "Just like old times."

Lewis bites back the hysterical laugh that's trying to force its way past his throat. "Another adventure."

Clark beams. "Exactly. Does that mean you're coming to explore with me tonight?"

"I—I don't think tonight. I might as well start my sketches here. Perhaps tomorrow?"

"Of course," Clark agrees, but his eyes are troubled.

And Lewis doesn't know what hurts more: that William cares enough to worry, or that he leaves anyway.

iv. _You've been throwing history to hell_

He thinks, sometimes, about what they look like during the day. Clark tells him everything he could possibly want to know about the marble interior of their prison—long, rambling tales of foreign leaders and men the size of thimbles, of talking statues and the moving skeletons of monsters long dead. Lewis, in turn, imagines rows upon rows of silent figures, perfectly motionless, soulless shells without even a trace of a claim to life or breath.

And in his mind's eye, he sees faces, hundreds of them, indistinct and identical. They stare up at those unbreathing dolls, babbling and gawking and pressing dirty hands against the exhibit walls: temporary visitors, soon vanishing back into the real world that the macabre dolls can't touch.

He hates the museum's visitors for that: for being free.

And in the darkest hours, when he's sitting alone behind glass panes and the world is bounded around him smaller than a nutshell, he hates Clark for the same reason.

v. _Or help me swallow pride_

"I'm sorry," Sacagawea says.

Lewis looks up from his empty notebook, startled. "For what?"

She shrugs. "For leaving you behind."

Lewis thinks of long days alone in the woods, surrounded by life and the unknown. He used to enjoy solitude; he remembers that much.

"Teddy is very kind to me," she adds, incongruously. "Like Captain Clark."

He forces a smile. After all, he abandoned her first.

"It's nothing," he says. "I'm glad that you're happy."

And to his own surprise, he means it.

vi. _A girl you don't speak of_

In the fifty years before Larry, they lived as a disconnected family of three, uncertain and alone, with only one another for eternal company. In those days, Lewis couldn't stand watching William and Sacagawea take care of one another.

He knew that he shouldn't resent them their measure of happiness, but it hurt to see William love so easily and so well. Once, a long time ago, Lewis had counted himself lucky to hold the affections of such a man. But fifty years of arguments and silent captivity were enough to blight even the strongest of loyalties, and Lewis knew that for Clark, the memories of their old friendship were dulled by thirty-odd years of life without him: a life with a wife and children and enough joy to make it all worthwhile.

Beyond even that, festering and sore and unspoken, was that after all they had been through—after travelling to the Pacific and back, after eating tallow candles to survive and living as savages for years on end—Lewis had been the one to give up.

They never talk about the suicide. And as the years pass, Lewis finds that there isn't anything else to say, either.

vii. _We wade under the tow like diamonds_

One day, Lewis tries to kill himself.

It doesn't work, of course. He's not alive enough to die.

Larry is baffled, and Teddy is quietly horrified. Nicky doesn't understand, because he's ten years old and his life still makes sense. Clark shouts for a while and then punches Lewis in the face.

No one understands it, not even Sacagawea, but she cries a little and stays silent a lot, and lets Clark do silly things like tear every single page—empty and worn—out of both of Lewis' blank notebooks.

viii. _While you're making love with violence_

"You left me," Clark says. "You went off to Grinder's Stand and shot yourself in the heart and _left me_."

They're sitting in one of the maintenance hallways, just enough fluorescent light spilling in from the back entrance of their exhibit to turn William's red hair a glowing crimson. No matter where he looks, the luminescence catches his eye, drawing him back to William's haggard face like a moth to flame.

"It wasn't about you," Lewis says, and it's not quite a lie. "I suppose you were too damnably selfish to believe anything else."

"And then I got you back," Clack continues, indefatigable. "It was a miracle, an act of God, because all three of us were together again, and the world didn't make sense but it didn't need to. We were _together_ again, and you—"

His voice breaks, and he falls silent.

"I'm not sorry," Lewis says.

_You can't take that from me, too_.

And it's strange, but Lewis has never—not once—seen William Clark look more determined.

ix. _Like lions do_

The next night, William refuses to leave the exhibit without Lewis, and Lewis refuses to go. So they sit in silence from sunset until sunrise, and this time Clark doesn't glower at the President when he comes to pick up Sacagawea.

The night after that, Clark leaves early in the night and returns a few minutes later to toss a blank notebook in Lewis' direction. He leans against the glass and waits, eyes dark and serious.

Lewis doesn't get up.

Sunset, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset—and they both wait. On the seventh day, Lewis breaks.

"Where should we go first?" he asks, wincing slightly as he struggles to stand. Clark automatically proffers a hand to help him out. A grin, slow and incredulous, is spreading across his face.

"Let's get lost," he says.

But they never get far enough along to manage it, because Lewis spends the next six hours sketching out every plant and animal in the Hall of African Mammals. And when Dexter steals his pencil, Lewis finally remembers to smile back.

x. _So to captains—oh, my captain_

Someday, Lewis will tell Clark everything that he's afraid of: of forgetting the sunlight and losing himself in the dark; of trying to live again, because he knows that's how you get hurt.

Someday, Clark will describe the world to him, slow and enthralling, his smooth tenor reminding Lewis of everything that it means to be alive and free. He'll dump a bucket of cold water over his head, and convince Larry to bring in a gun that Lewis can practice with—

_And he'll trust him with it, because sometimes you can't do anything but try_.

—and someday, William Clark will kiss him, bite his lower lip hard enough to break the skin, remind Lewis of everything that blood and pain and love taste like, run calloused hands over his bare shoulders and whisper him all the promises that he's never been able to keep.

No one will understand it, except maybe Sacagawea, and even if she does, she won't do anything but smile: smile a lot, and cry a little, and let them do the silliest thing in the world.

She'll let them fall back in love.


End file.
